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Margo Abels parts 1 & 2

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Transcription File: Margot Abels parts 1 & 2 transcript
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Plain Text Exported From Aviary: 2024-10-20T09:45:54


TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN

[00:00:00]
INTERVIEW 1 of 2, May 16th, 2024

[00:00:00]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:00:00]
Today's date is May 16th, 2024. My name is Andrew Darien. I'm a Professor of History at Salem State University, and I'm conducting this interview as part of the Mass Humanities-funded project "Through A Rainbow Lens: A Reflection on Lynn's LGBTQ+ History." I'm joined today by Margot Ables, a professor of Human Services and Women's— Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. She's been a resident of Lynn for twenty five years, and was part of the original board of directors for NAGLY [North Shore Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth]. Thanks so much for being here today. I just wanted to begin by confirming that I have your permission to record this conversation.

[00:00:45]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:00:45]
Of course. Absolutely.

[00:00:46]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:00:48]
Thank you. So you were born in New York City, and then eventually would graduate from Livingston High School in New Jersey. Where exactly did you grow up?

[00:00:59]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:01:02]
Well, we moved to new Jersey when I was about seven, six or seven. I would say— I've always said that I'm a New Yorker, but my schooling years were in New Jersey, so maybe technically New Jersey?

[00:01:18]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:01:18]
Do you have memories of your first few years of living in the city?

[00:01:23]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:01:24]
Oh, absolutely. My grandparents lived in the city; other relatives did[, too]. We would come back to the city often to visit. Our lives were very city focused.

[00:01:35]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:01:35]
Mhmm.

[00:01:36]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:01:36]
And then as soon as I could move back to the city, I did.

[00:01:40]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:01:41]
Your parents were both New Yorkers, and also children of the Great Depression. How do you think that shaped their worldview, and their parenting of you and your sister?

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MARGOT ABELS

[00:02:01]
They were also—my mother was an artist. My mother was also a bit of an academic[, however]. She didn't teach in a college, but she got a Fulbright [scholarship] when she was in her early twenties, and went and lived in Antwerp, which a lot of people— a lot of women —at that time didn't [really] venture off on their own. She was [a] really talented painter. So I would say, my upbringing was sort of a mix of a little alternative culture, if you will, and [having] strong feelings about what it meant to be Jewish, [and] what it meant to a bit of— a generation away from the Holocaust. [I was] definitely raised believing that my partner— well, my spouse —should be Jewish. But at the same time, we didn't really go to synagogue much. It was sorta a mix of things. Uhm. Yeah, yeah....I'd say that's really it. My father was a little bit more reserved than my mother, but was definitely a big supporter of her work and [also] having two independent daughters.

[00:03:25]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:03:26]
And were either of your, or both of your, parents parents immigrants?

[00:03:33]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:03:34]
Yeah, that's also a mix. Some of them came over when they were really little. My grandmother on my father's side [was an immigrant]. But my mother's parents are both from....—one's from Brooklyn and one's from Rhode Island. Yeah. I guess at one time there was a big Jewish population in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

[00:04:00]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:04:01]
Mhm.

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MARGOT ABELS

[00:04:02]
I don't really know much about when they lived there, but everybody sort of converged on Brooklyn and Long Island.

[00:04:11]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:04:12]
What was your relationship with your sister Julie— who I think is maybe.... three years older than you?

[00:04:19]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:04:19]
Yep. A little bit more than that, but yes. We were kind of typical, competitive sisters for a really long time. We are now very, very close. I think part of that is because both our parents have passed in the last five years or so, and my spouse passed. She was right here every minute for that. We're really the only family that's left, so our relationship has changed significantly.

[00:04:57]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:04:58]
So you mentioned that being important......— [that being] Jewish was important to your family, but [yhat] you were more secular [and] not especially religious. Can you say a little bit more about that? What it meant to be Jewish?

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MARGOT ABELS

[00:05:15]
Yeah, I'd say.... I— I mean, I never— I went to some Sunday school when I was a little kid, but I [didn't have a] bat mitzvah. I don't speak Hebrew. There's a lot about the religion that I don't know. But in terms of family custom and tradition, we always would get together for Passover and the fall holy days. Yeah. So. My well, my father— Interestingly, my father's father died when he was very little, and my grandmother became a Christian Scientist, so they were like kinda 'in-and-out' of the religion for awhile. And I'd say my mother's parents also weren't that religious. My sister more than anybody is now. I mean, of course, there's only two of us. But for a long time, she and her husband [were] very active in their synagogue. I don't know. I think I've veered off track with this question.... But yeah. I mean, I've never wavered from understanding that I'm from a Jewish family, but it's never been about the practice of the religion for me.

[00:06:38]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:06:39]
Do you think whether from Judaism or just otherwise, you were raised with certain values? I mean, one that I've heard pretty clearly is a sense of independence, particularly for women. Is there anything else that you think was really important that was transmitted to you?

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MARGOT ABELS

[00:07:02]
Of course. Being a good person in the here and now [was taught to me]. There's not a focus on [the] afterlife. My parents were— so in this country, we're different sort of levels of intensity of Judaism. We were, at best, 'Reformed Jews'. What was more important to my— Well, actually, let me backtrack for one second. My mother was very involved in the Socialist Party. I think that was sort of part of being a Jew in New York at that time. I would say her Judaism was more about her politics. And both my parents were involved in the Democratic Party their entire lives and had really strong opinions about feminism and the right to choose, and all of that. As a young girl, I was brought to reproductive rights marches in D.C. and I've always connected that to their religion [and] how they expressed being good people in the world.

[00:08:19]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:08:21]
Was that radical socialism very popular, or ever present in a suburban town like Livingston? Or were you—

[00:08:33]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:08:33]
No. Absolutely not. My mother was always set herself a little apart from other people; my father less so. But I think [that] because she was a painter, she was always allowed to be 'the crazy artist' over there. Um. But yeah, so no.... — [in] suburban New Jersey? Not at all.

[00:09:00]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:09:00]
How do you think your folks would have described you as a child?

[00:09:04]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:09:08]
That's a really interesting question. I was very quiet as a child. There was— I mean, one thing I didn't write about was the alcoholism all over my family. That created an environment that was really uncomfortable for me. So, I tended to be a little..... I don't know? A little withdrawn, a little quiet, a little..... you know? Protective of my vulnerability around that. Yeah. That was hard.

[00:09:52]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:09:54]
Were both of your parents alcoholics? And how did that manifest itself?

[00:10:01]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:10:02]
Yeah, actually. My dad was not, [but] my mother— well, I would say that neither of them were. But my mother had all of the behaviors, and her brother was an alcoholic. I'd say some of it was like 'active drinking' and some of it was more drinking-related mental health stuff that was all undiagnosed. I dunno. If you interviewed everyone in my family, they might not have the same take on it that I do, but it was definitely how I understand my experience of being younger. On the surface, we were an intact family living in the 'burbs. We both grad— my sister and I graduated on time and we both got went to good schools, and did what we were supposed to, but behind closed doors, it [was] a little harsh.

[00:10:54]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:10:55]
Mhmm. Do you remember your first crush?

[00:11:03]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:11:05]
My first crush? Like of any kind of crush, or my first queer crush?

[00:11:10]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:11:12]
Both.

[00:11:13]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:11:13]
My first crush........wow.....I mean, uh, yeah......I guess [that] when I was in middle school and high school, I followed what other what my friends were doing and definitely had crushes on boys then. It was all typical, heartbreaking and life affirming all at the same time. But then, by the end of high school, I definitely started having crushes on girls —or realized that I was having them. Then in college.....I don't know. I was raised in a family where you didn't really label yourself. It was all a little 'hippy dippy'. But now I think I'm full circle back to that, you know? —Of feeling like my label's not that as important to me as it was in my formative years.

[00:12:22]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:12:26]
Did you have any family friends who were gay or lesbian?

[00:12:30]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:12:33]
Let's see.......my mother talked about having gay friends, but not [any] that lived in Livingston, New Jersey. She went to Music & Art [High School] in New York City, so she knew a lot of gay people. She always, ever since I was little, would say things like..... she usually would say, "If you married someone that wasn't Jewish or someone that wasn't white, I know that you would be strong enough, or smart enough, or whatever, to go into it with your eyes open." And I always have said that I substituted, if it was a woman, into that. I never thought, um...—I wasn't exposed to a whole lot of homophobia in my family. Yeah. Both my parents....—when I finally came out to them, both my parents were [like:] "We just hope it's easy for you", I guess is a generous— maybe a thoughtless —but a generous comment for a parent to say.

[00:13:52]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:13:53]
So, you must have been like on the cusp of high school or college when the Stonewall Riots unfolded. Was that something that was on your radar at the time?

[00:14:07]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:14:07]
Not at all. Not at all. I mean, again, it wasn't a taboo subject in my household, but I can't remember a whole lot of conversation about it. I had a friend in high school who came out our senior year and we were— we— our friend group just embraced her. It wasn't— It was— I don't even remember all of us talking about it much, which is kind of funny. But, that could be my memory, though.

[00:14:50]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:14:51]
What made you decide to go to Johns Hopkins? And what did you want to do before you went off to college, or what did you imagine yourself doing after college?

[00:15:03]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:15:04]
So interesting. I started at Bard College, which seems much more aligned with my personality, then and now. I studied Studio Art there. I thought I would somehow be involved in the art world. But I wasn't ready to be that independent and that creative, and [being] a whole individual. It was a hard first year for me. I ended up deciding to transfer, and, um..... I don't know. I applied to Hopkins and got in, and everybody was just— I got a lot of street cred, [to] put it that way, from "Oh my god! You got into Hopkins??" So I just did it. I spent three years there. I had a really good experience. I did not study Studio Art, because they don't have a Studio Art Major there. I decided that although the art world was important to me, that my politics were more important. So, I studied a lot of sociology—well, some sociology [and] political science, but I also studied art history there.

[00:16:20]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:16:22]
And were you very politically active on campus?

[00:16:25]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:16:25]
Yeah, there was a lot to change there. I mean it was the era that everybody was doing anti-apartheid stuff. I remember having on my mortar board when I graduated something about "divest now," or something. But, yeah. I was one of the chairs of the Feminist Alliance, and the Progressive Student Union, and, um......it was a small progressive group there. But we also were really involved in things going on outside of campus, too, which I think was really important. It's where I met a lot of older lesbians that were organized. My first regular gay bar [experiences] was going out with these women and going to women's music concerts and....... Yeah. I think we made the best of Baltimore, and Hopkins. I don't regret it— not going back to Bard. It is what it is.

[00:17:41]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:17:41]
The AIDS epidemic was unfolding while you were in college. Do you remember about when you first learned about it?

[00:17:49]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:17:49]
I vividly remember being in a Women's Studies class with our professor, Emily Martin, who is a sociologist. I actually assigned her work to some of my students now. And I remember this woman that I'm still friends with on Facebook —I just....I didn't understand her, —but I remember her standing up in class, and giving this impassioned plea to make sure that we hugged our gay friends. And [she] went on and on and on teary eyed. I remembered most of us had a very bad reaction to it. Like: "That's not what's going on here. This isn't just about breaking taboos of people that are infected shouldn't eat in your house [for example]." That's the kind of thing she was saying, you know? It just felt like it really missed the mark on what was really important about what was happening. Did I also say that I went to my prom, my high school prom, with another couple? Three of the four of us have come out [since then]. And I'd say, yeah. I'm kinda saying there wasn't a lot going on when I was in high school, but there was a lot going on when I was in high school. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:19:25]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:19:28]
What was the dating scene like at Hopkins?

[00:19:31]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:19:36]
It was the early 80s. I went to my first pride parade there. This is a little different answer to your question, but people were wearing masks. I mean, I wasn't ,and the people from Hopkins weren't, but a lot of the people just were afraid of losing their jobs. It was a really different time. Baltimore had a bunch of gay bars that were really fun, and so you'd meet people there. We had a gay group on campus that our allies had to put their phone numbers on, because people would stand outside to see who was going to the meetings. I don't remember anybody getting harassed or hurt, but I just remember people......—there was definitely some fear, even though we were college students and felt really righteous.

[00:20:39]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:20:42]
Were these other college students who were monitoring the group?

[00:20:46]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:20:47]
I would say that yes, there were other college students. But generally, I didn't feel— generally I think we felt more harassed because of our feminism. Yeh. —By neighbors in the dorms and just people being college students, I guess. Ridiculous. But, we never felt threatened.

[00:21:21]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:21:22]
And did you take some time off after Hopkins? Or did you go straight to Sarah Lawrence [College]?

[00:21:30]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:21:31]
I took a year off or so [off]. I worked in New York City, um, and lived in Brooklyn. I worked at an abortion clinic, which was sort of a continuation of stuff that I did in college. We did a lot of escorting people in when protests were happening. That was a pretty violent time, too, around reproductive rights. Operation Rescue was really, very active particularly in the D.C. Baltimore area. We had a— when I was working in New York, we had a number of bomb threats: often just to close us down for the day. And then there was a bomb that went off at one point, but we nobody was in the office then. That was also a big focus for me.

[00:22:34]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:22:35]
Did you feel like those threats were intimidating? Or [did it] stiffen your resolve for the cause, or some combination of the two?

[00:22:46]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:22:49]
I don't know that I found them intimidating. The protesters in New York were not as credible as the ones in Baltimore. The ones in Baltimore all came in their 'Sunday best', pushing their strollers. In New York, it wasn't like that. They just felt in the way.

[00:23:18]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:23:19]
So, it seems like you're doing all this really important activist, pro-woman, feminist work, and then you choose to go and get an M.A. in Women's History. Tell me a little bit about the shift between going from the practical and political, to the more intellectual, and the relationship between the two.

[00:23:47]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:23:47]
Wow. Interesting. Um. Let's see. I was— I also think an ethic that you get, or a value that you gey, being raised in a Jewish family is......maybe that there's not that much of a......the gap between the academic and the activist is not that vast. So, I did my degree at the same time that I was working at an AIDS hotline: the New York City Department of Health AIDS hotline. Those things really went together in my life. They didn't feel like there was that [much of a difference]. I never expected, when I did my masters, that I would then go on and do a Ph.D. I wasn't— I didn't— I wasn't raised around the world of academics. I just thought it would inform whatever work I was doing. Most of my academic work in my master's program supported my activist work. It didn't seem that much of a gap.

[00:25:11]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:25:12]
Did did you have to do a thesis?

[00:25:15]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:25:15]
I did. Yes.

[00:25:17]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:25:17]
Do you remember what it was on?

[00:25:18]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:25:19]
Yes, I do! Of course! I did......it was mostly informed because I was doing AIDS work. It was on a social history, or maybe a history of, discourse around campaigns to do mandated syphilis testing. It was really— And so then I added a piece, at the end, that focused on efforts to do mandatory HIV testing, which was a big issue at that point. [I focused on] whether or not it was cost effective, what ideas about queer people, what ideas about women, what ideas about marriage and sex, and family, were [all] part of the mix [for my thesis].

[00:26:12]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:26:13]
When and how did you meet Bridget?

[00:26:15]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:26:18]
Huh? Let's see. So, I worked in New York for a while. Oh! After my masters, I kept working for the New York Department of Health, but I became a trainer in their unit that trained people to do HIV testing. It was their certificate training for any nurses or people that worked in prisons, or whatever it might be. It was such a fascinating, fascinating job. I learned so much there. But then New York was getting tired. My partner of the time and I were tired, and just always felt dirty and broke. We were both doing AIDS work. You never make a lot of money [in that field,] and it's hard to get ahead in New York. And she wasn't healthy, so we decided to leave. An apartment opened up in her family in Somerville, in Davis Square, so we moved up here. I dunno. We were together maybe another couple of years up here living in Davis Square. I can't even remember what work I was doing. Oh! I was already— I came up here and I started to get involved with the Safe Schools program. Then things shifted to doing queer youth work, and that's actually how I met Bridget. I ended up working at the—this is all over the place, right? I ended up working at the New York— I mean, at the Mass Department of Education. At that time the Safe Schools program had just started, and we had money and support. Bridget was working for an organization that was doing queer youth work, and we met at an organizing meeting of some of a big, the first gay youth conference in Massachusetts. Yeah.

[00:28:37]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:28:39]
And did she introduce you to Lynn or did you discover it together?

[00:28:44]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:28:45]
No, we discovered it together. We were living in JP [Jamaica Plain], and our the building went [to a] condo, and it just seemed crazy for us to stay there because the space was small and expensive. So, we started looking for a house and it took us forever to find a house. [It was] just not knowing the different neighborhoods and....—but we had a friend that lived up here; we came up—this is hilarious —we came up to visit her to see the area, and as we were leaving, we drove past a house that had a big rainbow flag. We left a note on their door to say like, "Do queer people live in Lynn?" And by the time we got home, we had a message from them because— we didn't have cell phones then —and we had a message saying, "Come back! Come back right now! We'll have you over!" And they've become lifelong friends of ours. We ended up finding a house on their block. This is Steve Harrington, who was the executive director of NAGLY for a long time. Now he just lives around the corner. We [actually] had a double wedding with him and his partner, on Lynn Beach, a number of years later.

[00:30:14]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:30:15]
And this was in 1999?

[00:30:16]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:30:18]
That we bought our house? Yes. Yeah. Not the wedding, but yes.

[00:30:23]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:30:23]
And you discovered Lynn the same year that you moved there? Or had you gotten to know it in the years previous to that?

[00:30:32]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:30:32]
No, I'd say we immediately started looking for a house here, and it took us a little while to find one. But it was within the same [time frame]. Maybe it was a little longer than a year, but not that long. And we were just up here looking for houses. I mean, we still lived in JP [then].

[00:30:52]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:30:53]
What was the answer to the question you posed to the anonymous Steve, about whether or not other queer people lived in Lynn?

[00:31:03]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:31:05]
Yeah. So, what was the [answer?] It was of course there are. I think Lynnside Out was an organization then, and there were all these gay bars. I know you know a lot about that. There was a lot of evidence, but also— Oh! When I first moved up here— so, I live on a busy street. Jeff and Steve lived in one house, and I'd say there are ten houses [nearby]. At that time, once we bought our house, four of the ten were queer occupied or owned, which really felt like a lot. I mean, coming from JP, where being queer was every other person for a while, it really felt like we had a community here. Yeah. They were really enthusiastic and really welcomed us into the neighborhood. Yeah.

[00:32:02]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:32:04]
And how soon did you get involved with NAGLY?

[00:32:08]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:32:11]
Oh god. Timeline[s are] not my strength. Oh, I should also say that when we were looking for a house, Jeff and Steve encouraged us to walk the Diamond District, which is what this neighborhood is called. And so we did, and we walked past the house of somebody who was having friends over for a barbecue. They were all gay men. We just stopped and started talking to them and they said, "We know a great realtor." So, we ended up getting referred to a queer realtor. All these people are still people we see, and our friends. But there was a already a network in place here [for us], before we left.

[00:33:00]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:33:01]
So this felt like a very comfortable and welcoming place for you?

[00:33:05]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:33:05]
Well, it did for lots of reasons. I mean, that was part of it. But part of it was [that] we were really adamant that we didn't want to move to a place that was predominantly white. You know? Lynn is surrounded by towns that are predominantly white. And we wanted to stay [where it was diverse.] We didn't want to go to Swampscott or Marblehead, or Lynnfield. We wanted to be here. That was a real strength —and [we wanted to be near] the ocean!

[00:33:36]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:33:38]
Were you part of the movement for marriage equality?

[00:33:44]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:33:45]
We absolutely supported it. But I'd say that it, for neither of us, was it like our top agenda item. We were doing other political work then. We were just focused on other things in our lives. Yeah. I mean, we gave money, we went to rallies. We participated in conversations about it. But being the good feminist that I am, I definitely have a deep critique of marriage as an institution. It felt uncomfortable getting married at first. But, it was definitely the right thing for us to do.

[00:34:39]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:34:40]
Tell me a little bit about the evolution of that decision.

[00:34:45]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:34:47]
Yeah. I mean, we have been together for a while before we were able to get married. I guess our twentieth anniversary would be next week. Because that's the twentieth anniversary of marriage here. Is that true? Yeah. That's kind of sad. Anyway, we were already talking about wanting to have a kid. [We] thought that it would be easier in Lynn to be able to have our family unit not questioned at all. I would say that was the main reason why we [got married]— was so that our kid would be easily connected to the two of us. And I remember we went to a course on queer parenting in Cambridge, and it was made really clear to us that if you were going to be queer people and have children, you wanted to live in Newton, Brookline or Cambridge. It was very clear to us that, yes, queer people live in Lynn, but queer people with kids don't live in Lynn. I mean, that I didn't end up being my experience, but it was really off putting to us. But anyway, that's not what you asked me. Yeah. Most of [the reason why] we we did it [was] because it was a political statement at first, and we also did it to respect, and honor, our families that had been there for us. We planned our wedding in five days. The day that we were able to get our marriage license, we were, I think, the second couple in line. Yeah. We just called— we talked to Jeff and Steve, [and] decided that we would do something right at the beach at the end of our block. We called our friends and said, "If you can make it come. But we will celebrate another time, too, so we understand we're not giving you a lot of time to prepare." —And most of our family made it. A bunch of our friends [came]. It was spectacular. We all just walked down to the beach together and [got married]. When I say that I know that we did the right thing, I don't— It was magical. It was magical. The moment we got married everything else disappeared. Yeah. I never regretted doing it. It was beautiful.

[00:37:56]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:37:58]
You mentioned in your bio[graphy] form that you hadn't been an especially frequent customer at either Fran's or 47 Central, but you had at least attended both bars. You sorta moved to Lynn when, I guess you were approaching forty, where bars are probably not as central to your life. You [were] already in a relationship, but what was your impression of those places?

[00:38:31]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:38:32]
I think I had done like the vast majority of my clubbing in New York City in my twenties. It wasn't, as you know, much [a] part of my life. But, we loved to dance. We liked to be out and about. When we first met each other, we went to clubs in Boston. And then when we came up here, we were renovating a house and thinking about inseminating. I don't know. [And we were thinking of] work and starting retirement f[unds]: all the stuff that old people have to do. Yeah. But we went a handful of times, and just really were into dancing. Bridget was never much of a drinker. Yeah. We ended up loving our house and having lots of people here.

[00:39:31]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:39:34]
How did it feel to be a person who's always had a independent, even potentially radical, perspective to a person who's engaging in a lot of conventions like home ownership, marriage and child rearing?

[00:39:53]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:39:54]
Very, very bizarre. Really bizarre. Yeah. I man, since my spouse passed about a year and a half ago, I look around and I wonder what I'm doing here. I am the sole owner of a house and a single parent. It doesn't really feel like me. It felt like we compromised for each other because it was important to us then. Bridget and [my] politics were somewhat different. She wasn't a Republican, because that's not doable for me, but— and she was deeply, deeply committed to anti-racist work. But we definitely clashed about things like that. It ended up more being just sparring. [It is] kind of funny. But, at least in the end, looking back at it, that's how I feel about it.

[00:40:59]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:41:00]
I mean, I guess also Lynn is not a conventional suburb. It's not a suburb at all. And it's a place of enormous diversity— not just demographically, but also of thought and culture and practice— so you might have traditional markings of convention. Yet, it's a very different kind of place at the same time.

[00:41:30]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:41:31]
Yeah, I think so.

[00:41:32]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:41:32]
I guess that's—

[00:41:33]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:41:34]
Yeah, it's a really unusual place. I'm a huge fan. I have— I mean, probably because we live— so I live in a corner at a big intersection, and our house is sort of purply, and people— and I'm outside gardening a lot, and people know us, even though I might not know who they are. And so always, we would have people just stop us places and say, "Oh, you're the two women with the little girl that live in the purple house, right?" And, so people who I would never connect with otherwise [I do connect with.] There are just so many different communities here that [are] not necessarily queer related. We ended up having to get involved in the special needs community. Our daughter played hockey, so we were really involved in youth hockey. It was really interesting to be the only queer couple for miles around in hockey.

[00:42:49]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:42:51]
Do you know Marcia Harms and Susan Shepherd?

[00:42:56]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:42:56]
Their names are really familiar.

[00:42:58]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:42:58]
They were the first gay couple in the state of Massachusetts to get a marriage license.

[00:43:05]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:43:06]
Yeah, yeah. Of course!

[00:43:06]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:43:06]
They were living in Lynn at the time. Although, I think they moved back to Cambridge. I interviewed them a few weeks ago, and their child was very big into hockey[, too]. That was a huge part of their community. I, of course, did not love my children enough to get up, and be at a cold rink at five A.M. on a weekend morning, but.....

[00:43:32]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:43:33]
Oh my god, it's painful, painful? Yeah.

[00:43:36]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:43:37]
But people who do it, love it —and love being part of the community. Can you just tell me a little bit about the relationship between Lynn Public Schools and Gordon College?

[00:43:50]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:43:51]
I have to say, I'm probably not the best person to speak about the details of that. I mean.....what I remember is that the Lynn Public Schools had an agreement with Gordon College to let students do internships. I think it was there. Am I remembering this correctly? It was an opportunity for high school students to do on site, hands-on community service. But, their politics or their policies, I should say, contradicted, at least in my mind, but a lot of people's mind, contradicted the basic ideas of discrimination that, at least, public schools needed to adhere to, or at least said they adhere to. There was a campaign to stop what was happening. Yeah. You're shaking your head so good! So, I'm not saying anything wrong! I remember a number of us going to the school committee meeting and presenting and reading about—.....I wrote a piece on my kid the support we've gotten in the schools and what. Gordon College symbolized as an evangelical Christian school. You know, I'm also like a crazy person. In Lynn, we don't have a lot of— like, the schools don't have a lot of open space. Some don't have gyms, some don't have auditoriums or cafeterias. A lot of times people use the Knights of Columbus building, and they're horrible people. They're horrible people. They raise more money than most organizations for anti-abortion activities. They are clearly anti-gay, and the fact that public entities pay to use their space, I think is probably not okay. I don't know that— I don't know that there's a space for a lawsuit to say you can't use public funds to— you can't give public funds to this organization. Uhm. Because if you really look into their— they don't hide the fact that they have this huge program to support fake abortion clinics. I don't want my money going to that. I've called the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] a bunch of times, but it's not a big ticket issue.

[00:47:07]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:47:09]
What was it like to be a part of the campaign to see Coco as the first gay city councilor in Lynn?

[00:47:17]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:47:19]
Really exciting. Coco's tremendous. We work together on the board. I think he has a lot of relationships with people that feel very intimate and like you're very special to him. That's a beautiful thing. But there is a really nice connection [between us]. He has a beautiful spirit and his politics are good. He's really responsive and takes care of people. I mean, I'm in his ward, so he is my ward councillor.

[00:47:54]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:47:59]
Mhmm

[00:48:00]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:48:00]
[Coco's election] was happening when Bridget was really ill, so I was able to help him by doing some writing for his [campaign] for him, and speaking for him. But, I wasn't as involved as I would have liked to have been. I was taking care of my spouse.

[00:48:20]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:48:24]
In certain ways, Lynn has been a remarkably welcoming place for all kinds of people, but particularly for LGBTQ+ people. Even on a broader national level, one can point to certain markers of success, liberation and acceptance [in Lynn]. Yet, one would be remiss if one failed to note what seems like a pretty significant backlash over the last five to ten years [towards LGBTQ+ people]. I'm wondering if that's something you've noticed, and how you make sense of it?

[00:49:14]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:49:14]
Queer backlash? [Is that what] you're talking about? Not Lynn specific[ally], just globally? Yeah. I mean, yes, of course, I noticed that. I teach about it. I think that my students, at least, often feel very comfortable because they live in a state that's progressive and that has done some decent things. I think they don't necessarily— like things that are happening elsewhere, breaks their heart. But they don't necessarily see how it then trickles down, and impacts them —except when a horrible president is elected.They're not feeling the sting of losing Roe v. Wade in a way that other people are, but they get it, and it's a concern to them. Yeah, I guess I had hoped that a lot of the foundational work that was happening in Massachusetts with Safe Schools, and the AGLY's [Alliances of GLBTQ+ Youth] all getting funded. Some— our Board of Ed[ucation] recommendations and.....—there's some decent stuff that's happened here. I really thought that we would, not that progress is linear, but I had hoped that that was the foundation for more sophisticated work. I think, partially because of all the backlash and the strengthening of the right and the Supreme Court and all of it, I think that we have just had to focus on holding steady. That, to me, is disappointing. I thought that Lynn and NAGLY, for instance, were really well positioned to start thinking in more complex ways about the intersection of immigration status, and race, and sexual orientation, and gender identity, and how that all works together, and how the model that has been used by a lot of these groups for so long, isn't flexible in a way that accommodates everybody. It just—is not— it's not neutral. It was made on a model that embraces white privilege. That breaks my heart. That, to me, being somebody who recently has experienced a lot of loss, I am thinking about what I want to do with my time and activist energy. I'm not sure that I would put my energy towards queer activism right now; unless it was an organization that really had a more complex philosophy.

[00:52:44]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:52:45]
Where do you anticipate directing your activism?

[00:52:49]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:52:51]
Yeah. I'm still not sure. I'm very interested in figuring out— in creating models of ways to have better dialogue, particularly around the whole situation in Gaza and the rage, and the fear, and the anti-Semitism, and all of it. How do we, especially at a college, how do we really have productive conversation[s]? I don't— I'm not seeing that happening. Yeah. All the DEI [Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion] work that's happening on college campuses seems very surface [level]. We need to make some significant changes. I men, I'm speaking as the sociologist I am. The system needs to change, and I don't see us working towards that. I don't know. I don't know where.

[00:54:00]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:54:01]
We've covered a lot of ground. Is there anything, with regards to your own experience or with the queer scene in Lynn, that you would have liked to talk about? Or that I didn't ask you about?

[00:54:16]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:54:19]
Well, I think for me, a lot of it.....—and this is just life circumstances, right? But I think a lot of what surprised me about Lynn is smaller things. I guess this isn't small, but being involved in the Special Ed community, or working with the public schools, and having to be like a fierce advocate for my kid who had an IEP [Individualized Education Program] from day one, [and who] doesn't really thrive in mainstream education. Then having a spouse that had cancer and working with the [Visiting Nurse Association], and hospice, and all of these organizations that you don't necessarily think of when you're thinking about, like, "Are they queer friendly?" "Are they queer accepting?" I just never— I wouldn't say that it was ever an issue, but there was.....I— I can't point to a difficult moment around.....I mean, I can point to some absurdity and some people who have said really crazy things, and the fact that going through elementary school, we didn't ever meet another gay couple at her school —which was really surprising to us. But there's been some of that, but generally we felt really connected, and supported, and part of the community. There was a mutual exchange. When Bridget was dying, our neighbors all came and lit candles on our stairs every night and stood outside every night. That's Lynn. It was just [a] beautiful, beautiful sentiment. They didn't come in. They just were out there.

[00:56:29]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:56:31]
I think that's a lovely and fitting image to end our interview [on]. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for sharing quite broadly about your life.

[00:56:44]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:56:45]
Thank you. Yeah. Really interesting.

[00:56:47]
INTERVIEW 2 of 2, July 10th, 2024

[00:56:47]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:56:51]
Today's date is July 10th, 2024, and I am quite grateful that Margo Abels is willing to join me again, in part because we were remiss in failing to address a very significant part of her political and professional background as it relates to sex education, and some attacks that she encountered by Right wing movements around the turn of the twenty first century, so we're just going to spend a little time talking about that. Maybe, Margot, we could back up just a little bit, and you can tell me a bit about how it is that you got involved in sex education to begin with.

[00:57:38]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:57:39]
Mhm. Um, yeah. At the time I was working at the Mass Department of Education and we, the people that I worked with, we housed a number of different programs. One was a federally funded HIV prevention program, and that's the one that's the funding stream that I worked on. Why that's important is because we were able to do sex education with that money because it was all related to HIV prevention and life saving information. But, we also have the Safe Schools program for gay and lesbian students, which had just started, aand they explicitly couldn't use any of their money for any sexuality education. And so although we worked very closely together, we were the, the sex ed folks or the HIV folks, were the people that really supplemented the Safe Schools work with anything that had to do with sexuality, health and wellness, any of that.

[00:58:47]
ANDREW DARIEN

[00:58:49]
Can you maybe explain a little bit about what exactly Safe Schools is for those folks who haven't heard about it, please?

[00:58:57]
MARGOT ABELS

[00:58:57]
Keep asking for clarification because there's a ton of detail in this very small situation. Um, so the Safe Schools program was probably the first in the country of a state funded program specifically focused on, um, it was lesbian and gay youth back then. We, in 2000, we, were told, "Don't talk about bisexuality, don't talk about trans folks." That changed. We certainly did, behind closed doors. But when someone that was attached to our funding was around, we didn't. And I say we again, I wasn't formally on that staff, but we all worked really closely. The program was a result of recommendations that the Board of Education had passed, um, in '96, so at the same time that welfare reform was funding abstinence education, there were state programs that were starting up that really focused onsuicide prevention, and getting supports in public schools, which was really.....It's a hard environment to do that kind of work in, at least in comparison with looking at community programming. So, yeah. In response to these recommendations and, again, I could give you such minute detail, if you wanted. But in response to these recommendations, a program was funded and it still remains, although there's lots of limitations on it, but it still does life saving work for kids in public schools.

[01:00:54]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:00:56]
I'm sure it's fairly self-evident, but it might be helpful if you briefly talked a little bit about why school is unsafe or can be unsafe for some of these kids, and what specific measures your program put in place in order to help and support them.

[01:01:16]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:01:16]
Oh, yeah. Let's see. Again, I think it's important just to separate the facts. There's a lot of, uh, what do you say....dichotomies?..that come up. So, what we thought was really important to have done and or what we thought was important to do, and then what we were allowed to do, what we were allowed to use funding for, what could be on face, what was positioned for the public. I think that's always true when you're working for big state agencies, right? And the sort of mythology of it is that the then Governor Weld, in response to data about the rate of suicide or suicidal ideation as well, amongst gay youth.....[there was] certainly a high population, high numbers in adolescence at large, but much higher when you're talking about people who are either questioning their sexuality or have come out or have come out to families. The suicide rates related to things like bullying, things like having to be in the closet and not draw attention to yourself, getting horrible messages about what a bad person you are, whether it's from your religion or from other kids at school. The whole situation was so bleak that Governor Weld started a governor's commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, which still is operating. And under their auspices, they funded a whole bunch of programs and one being......the money eventually became what funded all of the support groups around the state, so NAGLY [North Shore Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth] and BAGLY [Boston Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth]. I know that's come up in some of your interviews, so it's all kind of the same pot of funding, the same initiative. That was a quick and dirty way to describe something that was pretty complicated.

[01:03:37]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:03:41]
You mentioned that, um, Weld was doing this in response to [the] prospective suicide of gay youth, but that that that was the mythology. Was that not the real reason why he was doing it?

[01:03:55]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:03:55]
I mean, that was the story. Nobody really questioned it. You know, it's not...—I mean, it's bad mythology in that it was....the numbers are horrific and heartbreaking. But, if that's what made him....—I mean, it wasn't the story of his child or his cousin, or it was really about the data. I think that's set out a particular tone of, "Let's look at the numbers." And as a Department of Education, we do the touth risk behavior survey, which is this big national survey about all different kinds of risks— whether it's nutrition or sleep habits or whatever it might be. And we were one of the first states— not the first state, but one of them —that actually started asking young people questions about their identity and their sexual behavior, and those numbers were sort of gold for us to be able to get any programs in place and be able to support what we were doing and why. Yeah. I think, I think this story set the tone for that.

[01:05:16]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:05:16]
It sounds as if you were both empowered to do your job in [an] area that you were very committed to, and yet at the same time, [you] were aware of some either formal or unspoken constraints that were put upon you.

[01:05:35]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:05:36]
I think that I carry that awareness with me everywhere I go. Yeah. I mean, I get to teach courses now as a professor at Northeastern that we don't get censored. I get to talk about sexual orientation. I get to talk about abortion. I get to talk about all these very controversial topics without really having to think twice. But I understand that I represent an institution and that's what allows me to do this work.

[01:06:13]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:06:15]
How does your work with college age students— technically, and presumably adults, and I say that with a smile as having two of them: not quite sure they're there yet. How does that differ from working with high school students, or middle school [students,] between [the ages of] fourteen and seventeen?

[01:06:37]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:06:38]
It's a whole different world. I mean, some of it's just the setting, right? Public schools, especially, are always under scrutiny by parents, by administrators, by bureaucrats, politicians. You're always waiting for the next controversy to arise. And also, there's not a lot of funding to do whatever it is that you want. There's really no funding that goes to schools to do sex education, or at least decent sex education.

[01:07:26]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:07:28]
What about with regards to the content, the theory, and the general approach? Is there anything about the difference in age that changes the way that, independent of outside forces, you would present that material?

[01:07:47]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:07:47]
Oh, of course! In terms of what's age appropriate, I mean, I think you always have to customize your content for your audience. Some of it— I mean, I don't think......—I'm not a believer that if I talked about something that was maybe too advanced for a high school student, that it's going to suggest to them to engage in behavior that you know they shouldn't, whatever that means. I don't ascribe to that kind of belief. I actually think that it's kinda like showing a kid a movie where there's some things implied and they just don't get it. I think that, you know, I would be much less effective if I [weren't] doing age appropriate education. I don't think I have the ability to warp a child's mind. You know, I think there's a lot of forces in the world that are already doing that. So, I don't know. Have I gone astray of your question? But, yeah, of course! And there's some incredible tools out there to help people understand what's age appropriate sex education. I mean, I could go on and on with lists of resources. But it's not just about the outside pressure. In fact, sometimes it's in spite of the outside pressure because the outside pressure is often ill informed, more responsive to politics than they are to what young people are really doing, want to know, [and] care about. [I believe that] it's important to listen to them.

[01:09:33]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:09:34]
Before we get to some of the Right wing backlash that was directed at you, can you [talk] a little bit about what kinds of things you were teaching to this group of fourteen to seventeen year olds? What kinds of things they were interested in? What kind of success you think you had in educating them?

[01:09:58]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:09:59]
Mhmm. So, I would say that most of our work was not directly with students, but more with the people that then had direct contact with students. We did a lot of teacher training. We worked with administrators to set policy. You know, What does it mean to set up a GSA [Gay Straight Alliance] in your school? What does it mean to allow gay couples to go to your prom? What are things that might supplement your curriculum? And how do you then respond to parents who might complain about a particular book you're using? Our work was more about that, but we did occasionally get to work with students— more [so] when we were asked to help out The Safe Schools programs' work because we did a lot of training with them. But, we also had a grant program at that time. The AIDS program had a grant program to work with Gay Straight Alliances [GSA] to do some sex ed and HIV prevention work. So, we funded a handful of schools, and we hired a trainer, and we would go in and do trainings around sex ed. A lot of times it was really open conversation to see what they needed to know. But a lot of times, it was less about sex than it was about dating, or making decisions for yourself that feel that felt healthy and authentic. I don't even think that young people felt comfortable talking about explicit sex acts, or whatever: how to make them safer, or how to make them feel mutual. I don't know that school would be a setting that most kids would want to talk to adults about that. But, yeah. We had written a whole curriculum that we implemented, and a lot of times it was things what do you do with the fact that your friends can go home, and at the dinner table, say, "I'm crushed down on somebody," And, you know, Youths hav[ing] to sit at dinner thinking, "How do I not let on that I have a crush on this person because the risks are too great?" You know? Where do you have sex? If you are a young queer person, because the issue of being discovered is more complicated. So, [we got] those kind of questions.

[01:12:39]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:12:41]
I imagine that, at least for some period, you felt as if this was gratifying work, and you were able to have some successes?

[01:12:55]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:12:55]
One I remember.....—This one time, in one of the schools that we had a grant [for,] we were talking about something, making decisions about sex or something, and I said, "You have a right to have your sex life be a good place for you, and to feel good about your choices when you decide you want to be sexually active, and how you want to be sexually active, and with whom." And this one high school girl turned to me and said, "I have never, ever heard an adult say that. I have only heard adults talk about sex in a way that's about shame. That [it's] about risk. That [it's] about disease." To hear that, it just blows me away. And so, yeah, I would say we felt really good about what we were doing, mostly because of the response from kids. I mean, the situation we're about to talk about, we were told that our work— I can't even pronounce this word 'prurient'. I'm terrible with that word. —You know that we did not see our work that way. We did not see our work in any way pushing a particular agenda, but that's how it was characterized.

[01:14:23]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:14:24]
Let's talk about that. When did you first come to learn that the work that you were doing was being mischaracterized by outside groups?

[01:14:36]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:14:38]
Well, there was a particular incident. It wasn't about our work in general, because we were on this small CDC [Center for Disease Control] or federally funded program and it made sense for us to talk about HIV prevention the way we did, but there was, in 2000, we were invited— We being the staff of this grant program that I talked about, so three of us —we were invited to do a couple of workshops at the GLSTEN conference, which is the Gay and Lesbian Straight Educator Network [GLSTEN]. I believe they've maybe changed their name a little bit, so I don't know that I'm [saying that] perfectly correct[ly], but you get the idea. "Also informally known or formerly known as GLSTEN." So we were invited to the GLSTEN conference, and we were asked to do two workshops: One for educators about sex education, and one for young people. And I think they billed it as sort of like answering all your questions or, or what you didn't know about sex or something: some catchy title. It was a Saturday. It wasn't through school, although some of the kids went there, I believe, with school groups, but it was totally voluntary —so it wasn't that we were invited into a classroom that kids were mandated to be in. And we did a number of different activities, but one was an anonymous question box. So students got to ask what they wanted, and we answered them. It was a Saturday. We used some humor, but when the workshop was over, I remember we had five minutes before our next workshop and running to the bathroom and being mobbed by a bunch of kids who were like, "Can we do internships with you? Can we work for your program?" That was amazing, I think mostly because it was just really honest. And we c[a]me to find out a couple of days later that there was somebody in the workshop who dressed down to look younger, and had audiotaped the whole thing! Then they took little snippets of it, and put this really homophobic voiceover to describe these small parts of sentences that we said, and created this tape, and distributed it widely to talk radio to government organizations, and [it] eventually made its way to D.C., and to the hearings that were to solidify, then Governor Cellucci's, ambassadorship to Canada. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, things that you could never have imagined. So, the next day after this became public, I was called into the commissioner's office and [was] immediately fired, and the people that I worked with were also fired, but I was the only one who was a state employee, the other two were contractors because that's how a lot of state agencies do it here, where they can have more people, but provide fewer benefits and all that. So I was the front person on this because I had a union, and I had some recourse, but it was it was a crazy scandal! It was all over the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald! And, you know, I had just moved to Lynn and I had news vans parked down my street just waiting for me to come and go. And conservative talk radio, really, did show after show after show [on this:] Bringing on experts to talk about having the fact that we were all gay, the three of us, and that we were [talking about sexual topics, and] that isn't this evidence that the state is in the business of warping the minds of young kids? How could they have ever let us do this work? And on and on and on! So again, this is where the the detail just gets crazy. The protests, the documents, the filings with the district attorney— just on and on. I'm not, you know, the court cases, um—

[01:19:48]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:19:49]
If a conservative talk radio listener knew nothing about your actual presentation or the larger work that you did, what would they have taken away from the reporting about what transpired on this Saturday?

[01:20:10]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:20:10]
Yeah. There are still archives online maintained by Mass Resistance, by a number of organizations by Peter LaBarbera: [the] group is the 'Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality', I believe it's called, so it's easy to find, still, how it was characterized. Again, we were looked at as.....—Some of the languages that we were leading kids into prostitution, that we were.....—That's what was filed with some, or they attempted to file with Martha Coakley, who was the district attorney at the time. Yeah. Just that it was evidence of a left wing agenda, a queer agenda, that all the work that the state was supporting and doing in schools was then implicated. Yeah.

[01:21:18]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:21:23]
I mean, would it be accurate to say that there is some truth in that it was a left wing and a queer agenda, but in terms of what exactly you were trying to do, it's radically different than what they were representing.

[01:21:41]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:21:41]
I do think that our approach and perspective, and beliefs and goals, were completely different. I do think that the idea of a left wing or a gay agenda is, has been so politicized that, you know, sure. I mean, we can use that language to just mean "Look, this is what my intent was or my goal was." But the idea that [there's] some insidious plot where gay people are sitting around, and thinking about the demise of society [is untrue]. I think that's what comes to mind when people hear that language. But sure, we had very different— and we continue to have very different —worldviews. So, the assault on how I believe the world should be operating. That really hasn't changed— just what the strategies are, and what the response should be changes.

[01:22:43]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:22:45]
Did you feel as if you had any recourse to defend yourself, or were you completely overwhelmed by the massive Right wing media?

[01:22:59]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:22:59]
Yes and yes. I mean, they were horrible to us, and dragged our names through the mud or whatever you say. But, there were parts of the gay community and colleagues of ours that were dedicated supporters. There were parts of the community that [weren't]. Those people who really felt like you needed to separate 'gayness' from sex, at that time— because it was too controversial —thought that what we were doing put the work in jeopardy. And we just basically said, "This is what we do, though. We're sex educators, we do HIV prevention. We're not strategizing in the bigger picture of the gay community." So I can understand that, but it definitely felt like we had been abandoned by a lot of people. But we also had plenty of supporters. We had lawyers involved. Excuse me, I'm going to take a sip of coffee. I had a labor lawyer who worked with me pro bono, who was amazing. and my union, they basically said to me, "We're going to grieve this with or without you." And so we went through a really fascinating grievance procedure where I actually won my job back. It was a while later and I said, "No, thank you." But, it was very interesting. It was all people from the Department of Education testifying, and washing their hands of us when they had signed off on us doing, presenting at this conference.

[01:25:10]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:25:12]
That must have been personally brutal and embittering experience to go through.

[01:25:21]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:25:23]
I tend to be somebody that really speaks my mind, so I had to bite the inside of my cheeks a lot. I had to be really coached around my facial expressions, and not to burst out laughing when they said absurdities, absolute absurdities. But this was a grievance against the Department of Ed[ucation]. It wasn't a grievance against the Right. And that would have been coming...—Going face to face with them only happened a handful of times. We were eventually advised that we would not win, [that] we would not be successful if we went forward with the court case against individual members of the Far Right. They had all signed off their assets [which] really was just going to create a big media splash. They are really good at spinning [events like that] in their favor.

[01:26:23]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:26:25]
I imagine that took quite a bit of restraint, both in not pursuing that, and having to respond in a way that was more favorable to you with the outcomes you were desiring, but not necessarily how you were feeling.

[01:26:41]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:26:43]
Yeah, I think we were tired by then. But, there was sort of, uh.....—I mean, it was all operating on really different levels. And I think some of it was this personal, "Do I leave my house? What are people thinking about us?" There was also a great group of people that raised money for us, and that celebrated us, and [really,] the letters we got from students was the support [that] was just so moving. But there was also— I think the worst part was what happened to sex ed coming from the Department of Ed[ucation], that people reference this situation. I mean, it's been twenty years, but people have referenced the situation. They'll make jokes about, "Is there anyone in here taping today?" —And not even necessarily knowing what the origin of that is from. I think the chilling effect.....—We were so committed to our work. I am a believer that sex ed is absolutely essential, and sex ed in the sort of bigger, more holistic definition of sex ed, but....—And that we are nowhere with doing good sex ed, particularly in schools. It breaks my heart. We were designing curricula, we were doing national trainings: All [of that] stopped. The Department of Ed decided that their employees couldn't do direct sex ed work with students after this, and it just was heartbreaking. I don't know what the policies are now.

[01:28:37]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:28:39]
What effect did that have on the GSA's?

[01:28:41]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:28:43]
Well, I think the GSA's are independent enough that they aren't seen necessarily as representing a state agency. So, I think that would depend on the particular school, and the [particular] people, that run the GSA. Behind closed doors, their conversations can be how honest they can be. I think one thing we know about GSA's, or one thing we knew then, was that GSA's often don't draw the kids at are [the] greatest risk— that the kids that really need to be in those groups don't necessarily go to them, but they might be the friends of people that go, or in a social circle with people that go, and so that they're worthwhile anyway.

[01:29:35]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:29:35]
Interesting. What would you say is....—looking back twenty, twenty five years later is the primary lesson that you take away from that experience.

[01:29:50]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:29:53]
That's a really good question. I mean, I think on a very personal level, it has made me feel like if I could get through that, I can get through just about anything. It's made me a little bit obsessed with the Christian Right, and so I spent a lot of time reading about them. It's made me even more committed to doing [work]. I mean, I took some time out of the field for a while. I actually worked at Fidelity [Insurance], which is hard to even imagine, but it was very short lived. And then I made my way back to the work, but in different approach. But, um, in the bigger picture, I don't know that until we really think differently about our systems of education, and how we treat sex and sexuality in our culture, that we're going to ever see decent sex education in schools, and that we're just not set up for that, and that we need to think bigger than just working with a school board, you know, that it needs to be sort of.......—Sorry. It was a big truck going by. Um, it needs to be bigger culture change, which is really not the direction that we see the world heading right now. And if the Right is successful in this next election, we are screwed. There is no question that they would immediately try to dismantle all of this, whatever work is remaining. And even if Biden has been quiet about some of what he's done to support queer people, he's done quite a lot. You know, that would all be gone.

[01:32:10]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:32:15]
Can you maybe, um, be a little explicit and say, should Trump and the Republicans take over the White House, what specifically is at stake for these kids? What will they lose? How will they become more vulnerable?

[01:32:37]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:32:37]
I probably could spend, you know, the next, I don't know, month answering that question. But I mean, just on a simple level, if you look at the 2025 Plan, and to see the things around cutting off of funding globally for conversations about trans healthcare, and abortion care, which is already in place. But, I think if you just look at Florida and Texas and see....You know what? We're not allowed to talk about what we're not providing. There's horrible consequences for people in some places, if they do talk about queerness or they do talk about abortion or whatever is the hot button issue that's getting traction on the part of the Right. I think that's invisibility. That's mental health issues, that's safety and support, and services. I mean, I think we've gone really far in a lot of ways. You could turn on the TV and see a gay couple pretty easily. It might not be the best portrayal, but still you can access it. But, so whether or not our popular [culture] immediately show the effects of what might be happening in schools. Um, yeah, I— I'm scared.

[01:34:27]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:34:30]
Well, I appreciate you not being so scared that you're unwilling to talk. One consistent theme, in both of the interviews, is your willingness to speak the truth as honestly as possible, o I want to thank you for providing this addendum. [It is] probably a testament to the degree to which.....—It's important that I initially told you it would be about fifteen or twenty minutes, and here we are up against forty minutes! I'll just give you the last word: If there's anything else you want to add, or you think that we missed.

[01:35:10]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:35:13]
I think...... I'm looking at my notes —And they're just pages and pages and I'm just letting them go, but I think what's really important is that we were caught up in a situation where the Right was successful, and they they are organized, they are well funded, they're strategic, [and] successful in their strategy —because they try anything and everything, and sometimes things stick and sometimes they don't. And so I, I think we just need to be more proactive and planful. One way to do that is to be able to talk to your kid openly about sex, or provide some good books for them to read when they're little kids. There's some great age appropriate books for little kids [that] just change their culture. The culture in your home. Something, I don't know. I just think we've got to not think that we can respond or contain what's happening right now. It was us twenty years ago, [and] it's somebody else now. It could be us again, who knows? But, that's almost incidental. It's just, uh, where they took this, you know? —And who they targeted, was way beyond us.

[01:36:45]
ANDREW DARIEN

[01:36:46]
Well, once again, thank you for sharing your story. I'm very appreciative of your time!

[01:36:52]
MARGOT ABELS

[01:36:52]
You're very easy to talk to, so thank you!

TRANSCRIPTION END